RoboGames 2011: Humanoids

RoboGames had about a dozen humanoid-only events this year, ranging from freestyle dance-offs to weight lifting to Kung-Fu. There was a whole cadre of Aldebaran Robotics' Naos strutting their stuff, as well as a multitude of custom-made robots, many of which were designed from the ground up specifically for competitions like RoboGames.

One of the highlights was Taylor Veltrop demonstrating his hybrid Kinect and Wii control system for humanoids. It's been fascinating to watch robot control systems evolve from Waldo-type master/slave hardware just a few years ago to a full body motion-capture system where someone can just jump in and have a robot (or two) mimic their every move. You'll see that in action in this video, along with footage of several other events and a gigantic just-for-fun humanoid robot rumble:

We're putting together more tasty footage from RoboGames, but if you need your fix in the meantime, Robots Dreams has a bunch of video on their YouTube channel.